Shell casings from suite 1505 where the Surrey Six murders took place.

Photograph by: Handout
, RCMP

METRO VANCOUVER — A box of bullets found in the apartment of accused killer Cody Haevischer matched the brand and calibre of one of the guns used in the Surrey Six murders, a ballistics expert testified Tuesday.

RCMP civilian employee Joseph Prendergast told Justice Catherine Wedge that the Ultrastar pistol jammed between a desk and wall at the crime scene fired the exact same bullets as those found in a closet at Haevischer's Surrey apartment days later.

He showed the B.C. Supreme Court judge the marks on one of the shell casings from the death suite and how it was the same as the "Remington brand 9-mm Luger calibre with a copper-jacket hollow-point bullets" from Haevischer's home.

Prendergast also told the first-degree murder trial of Haevischer, Matthew Johnston and Michael Le that his tests on 19 shell casings retrieved from suite 1505 showed that 10 of them came from the Glock discarded at the crime scene, while the other nine were from the Ultrastar.

He also examined 17 bullet or bullet fragments from the room where Chris Mohan, Ed Schellenberg, Eddie Narong, Ryan Bartolomeo, and Corey and Michael Lal were shot to death about 2:40 p.m. on Oct. 19, 2007. Prendergast said eight of the bullets had been fired from the Ultrastar, but that the other nine could neither be "identified or eliminated as having been fired from the Glock pistol."

"That means they could have been, but there is really no way to identify them to the gun," he explained.

Because of the way Glocks are manufactured, he said "it is unusual to be able to identity a bullet fired from a Glock barrel back to a Glock."

Prendergast said a white Puma sweatshirt he was asked to examine had several small holes that came from it being near a gun that was fired.

And it had gunshot residue near the centre zipper and on the left sleeve, he said.

The trial earlier heard the sweatshirt was found in the hallway of the 15th floor of the Balmoral right after the murders.

"Is it possible that this sweatshirt could have been used as a muffler to dampen the noise of a firearm or the report of a firearm?" asked Crown prosecutor Matt Stacey.

Replied Prendergast: "That's a possibility. I have seen other garments used in such a fashion."

Under cross-examination, Prendergast agreed with Haevischer's lawyer Simon Buck that the Remington 9-mm ammunition is extremely common and used by police forces all over North America.

Buck also asked Prendergast about his visit to the crime scene shortly after the murders, when all six victims were still in suite 1505.

"It was a very serious incident and they wanted me on standby just in case there was work to be done," Prendergast testified.

He said he would have done a bullet-path analysis but saw no bullet holes in the walls, making it impossible to "draw a line between two points."

Buck suggested there were independent experts that used other techniques to analyze bullet trajectories because they don't have access to the crime scene.

But Prendergast said just because someone uses another technique "doesn't make it a verifiable method."

And he admonished Buck for suggesting he had "the luxury of being able to go to the crime scene."

"I don't know if I would call that a luxury," Prendergast said.

The trial, now in its second month at the Vancouver Law Courts, is expected to last up to a year.